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Brand Credibility Part 4 of 6: How Messaging Can Resonate or Repel Clients and Candidates

In the first installment of our Brand Credibility series, we laid out a key brand strategy for staffing and recruiting firms by:

Employment agencies who can keep up this balance of investing in and supporting their brand will be best positioned to reap the many advantages of a strong and credible brand.

Another critical element of building strong brand credibility is messaging. More specifically, we want to examine how the consistency of your company’s messaging can resonate or repel your current and potential clients and candidates.

In Calendars and Content: Consistency is Key

Staffing and recruiting agencies with inconsistent messaging could be defeating the purpose of their brand. What’s more, inconsistent messaging could be undercutting the substantial investments they’ve committed to creating a powerful and memorable brand in the staffing and recruiting industry.

Consistency is one of the most effective ways to develop trust with your audience. There are many ways you could define a “consistent message,” but the two most important definitions of consistency are in the frequency in the messaging and in the content of the message itself.

Why Frequency Matters

Like a friend you can always depend on to either drive you to the airport or pick up the phone late at night – a brand that publishes content consistently works selflessly to contribute to their audience’s lives.

There’s an important distinction there. 

Great brands don’t publish content simply because there’s a due date and a deadline. They publish content because they have something great to share – something that contributes to the lives and well-being of their audience.

That is not to say companies shouldn’t have a content calendar. Working from a content calendar doesn’t make your messaging disingenuous and can be very helpful for various reasons.

Content calendars help to ensure you’re not under- or over-publishing. Mapping out your content can also help to ensure you’re sharing a good balance of subjects – from how-to’s to culture pieces to industry news.

It’s worth noting: a content calendar is called a “content calendar” for a reason rather than a “calendar of content.” (It’s not just semantics to put content first.)

In creating a consistent schedule of valuable content, a company will earn the trust and loyalty of its audience. 

Why is On-Brand Messaging Such a Big Deal?

We’ve heard the term “on-brand” for so long because it’s a great catch-all for everything consistent in your content. Everything about your content can either be on- or off-brand, to name a few, your:

  • Company’s color palette
  • Selection of fonts
  • Tone and voice
  • Visual assets
  • Design elements

If you’re not careful with your brand, you could be creating inconsistent messaging that is at odds with your overall brand strategy. This can happen in a number of ways. Companies might simply lose focus of their brand elements. They might insufficiently train content team members, or fail to impress the importance of sticking to the company brand. 

There are several reasons why a company might publish inconsistent content. But why is it such a big deal?

When an inconsistent message lands with the audience, unfortunate things happen – like confusion, distrust, or frustration to name a few. 

Those of us who’ve had a favorite band can probably still remember when they released their unfortunate “experimental album.” Similarly, those of us who’ve faithfully watched a beloved tv series can probably pinpoint what season the series went “off the rails.” (We’re looking at you, Season 8 of The Office.)

Inconsistent messaging is serious stuff and has the potential of severing an emotional connection. This is why brand consistency should not be taken lightly.

Create Consistent Staffing & Recruiting Marketing that Resonates with Clients and Candidates

The world of staffing and recruiting runs on trust and dependability. But real “trust” can be elusive and hard to come by. Only those staffing and recruiting agencies who publish great content on a dependable schedule stand to earn the trust of their audience.

Whether you want your marketing to resonate with business partners or potential candidates, we can help! 

At Parqa Marketing, we believe in the power of brand credibility. We are passionate about helping your company develop messaging that builds and supports your business. Contact us today to learn more. 

Stay tuned to our blog for more in our series on brand credibility.

brand your way out of the summer slowdown_Parqa blog

Brand Credibility Part 3 of 6: Brand Your Way Out of the Summer Slowdown

Branding – it’s largely about staying top-of-mind with your audience. Even though hiring has been roaring back from COVID shutdown levels, we’ll soon be heading into summer: the season most staffing and recruiting agencies back off their advertising campaigns.

But keeping your brand top-of-mind means staying current with broadcasting your brand consistently, even during the downtime – especially during the downtime.

Part 3 of our 6-part series on branding is all about staying top-of-mind. Since summer is nearly upon us, and many of your competitors are checking out for the next 2-3 months as the staffing and recruiting industry typically sees a downtick in activity, this could be your chance to make an essential investment in your brand that will pay off throughout the rest of the year.

Should Staffing and Recruiting Firms Double Down on Branding During the “Off-Season”?

There are many reasons to keep up with your company messaging through the summer. However, two reasons stand above the rest:

  1. Think of staffing and recruiting agencies like track and field athletes. Long-distance runners are made during the off-season. They’re not training for the marathon on the day of the marathon. For this same reason, many companies who spend the off-season laying the groundwork for their brand, and investing in its message, won’t have to spend the rest of the year building the brand. If you invested in your brand during the summer, you could spend the rest of the year running great campaigns that support your brand strategy.
  2. Summer is the season that everyone, especially your competitors, is most likely to take a break. The traffic for messaging, especially for staffing and recruiting agencies, gets quieter. Taking advantage of this downtime could be a critical step in coming out ahead of the game. Those businesses and job seekers who’ve become more familiar with your brand and its message are more likely to partner with your recruiting firm later.

This can be especially advantageous for Q3 when many businesses begin to “panic hire” in preparation for the holiday rush of Q4. When they need to hire talent, they’ll know your name.

Choosing the Correct Brand Strategy for Your Staffing or Recruiting Firm

How much is enough? Should your firm ramp up your content cadence? Or should you maintain your current pace? 

Every staffing and recruiting firm is different and has different goals as a result. Many are trying to focus on keeping current with a very specific target market, while other firms want to broadcast their message to a much larger audience

A good rule of thumb is: the more you invest in your brand now, the more strength it will have later. And this is especially true if that investment is made when there’s less competition.

When considering your marketing budget for Q2/Q3, keep in mind the potential for increased market access. Even a campaign that reaches two or three extra businesses could be just the push a business needs to tip them into establishing a long-term, mutually beneficial employment partnership.

Building Trust: Projecting Reliability When Nobody Else Is

The very best staffing and recruiting firms know how they are not in the business of just filling jobs. They’re in the business of building relationships.

Businesses who take the summer off may not be saying anything explicitly wrong, but their message is clear: “We’re only here for you when it’s convenient for us.” In the world of staffing and recruiting, this can be especially harmful to a brand.

Recruiting firms work so hard to convey reliability and trust, and rightly so. Above all, they want to assure their clients, candidates and stakeholders they can be depended on to solve complex staffing problems and provide custom solutions at a moment’s notice. It’d be a shame to undo all that hard work with a message that is at odds with successful and dependable recruitment.

The Actual Cost of Building a Strong Brand?

We get it. Many staffing and recruiting firms believe building a brand can be expensive. They’re hesitant to spend the extra budget to increase their summertime advertising spend. But this rarely holds water when compared to several much more common business decisions that aren’t guaranteed to pay off. 

For example, why do businesses advertise on billboards? It might seem like an odd question. Billboards are so ubiquitous many businesses don’t actually stop to think about their usefulness. 

Why then would recruiting firms not allocate a similar budget on increasing their online presence? Especially when there are so many ways to measure the ROI of your digital spend. 

Still, many firms may believe they don’t have the budget to increase spending during the summer months. However, at the very least, staffing and recruiting firms should be working hard to maintain their current digital spending to support their values of dependability and reliability.

Brand Your Way Out of the Summer Slowdown

For more information on branding, check out our eBook on Brand strategy, and stay tuned to the next installments in our six-part series on branding. 

You can find the first two installments in brand strategy for staffing and recruiting firms here:

We can help! We believe in lifting up businesses by their brand. If you could use creative solutions to help you brand your way through the summer slowdown, contact Parqa today. We look forward to hearing from you.

Your Brand Values: Authenticity

Nobody has all the answers. In fact, any company who says they’ve got it all figured out is, by their nature, suspect. So it’s not only okay to be open with your struggles; it’s beneficial. Being open about the obstacles your staffing agency faces is just one of the many ways to model the authenticity of your brand. 

Of course, it’s not all struggle that other businesses can identify with. Sharing company milestones, reflecting on interesting articles and industry news – there are so many ways to be genuine and offer a breath of fresh air in the highly commercialized marketplace of staffing and recruiting.

The Follow-Through Living Into Your Company Values

Brand Credibility Part 2 of 6: The Follow-Through: Living Into Your Company Values

In our first blog on brand strategy, we examined why investing in your brand is so critical to staffing and recruiting firms. In this blog, we hope to illustrate how to build credibility and support your brand promise by following through on your company values.

Building Credibility By Living Out Your Values

Imagine a business that needs to fill a position quickly. Out of the several agencies that put forward a candidate, your company’s values could be the main differentiator between you and the competition.

The specific qualities a business would be looking for may vary. But it’s safe to say that every business is looking to work with an agency that reflects the very same values they’re looking for in their employees.

Your Brand Values: Professionalism

Just as businesses are looking for employees who act professionally, they would expect the same from their staffing/recruiting agencies. But that does not mean your agency has to be boring or that you should sterilize your marketing content.

On the contrary – people love a company whose content has a rich voice and personality. Rather, keep a keen eye on how your business is interacting with people on social media.

Some key identifiers for brands that demonstrate professionalism could include following up with questions from job seekers and Glassdoor reviews. Even responding to unfavorable reviews can have an incredibly positive impact on your brand, especially when you’re taking reviews seriously and demonstrating commitment to resolving issues.

Your Brand Values: Honesty

The high level of trust and the importance of lasting, deep relationships in staffing and recruiting illustrates how, for agencies and their talent, honesty is of the utmost importance.

Businesses are counting on you to help them find the perfect candidates. They’re relying on you to be honest about what is best for their company – that should not be taken lightly. Sometimes candidates can exaggerate their skills and experiences. It is up to recruitment consultants to catch those inconsistencies to ensure your candidates aren’t embellishing on their skills or experience. 

Your Brand Values: Adaptability

As staffers and recruiters, you know the unpredictable employment challenges your partners are dealing with. Often their needs for talent can come at a moment’s notice. They need fast, dynamic solutions. If your agency isn’t up to date on the latest technologies or has a rigid way of doing things, what does that say about your ability to quickly provide solutions for an unpredictable and rapidly changing workforce?

The importance of quick communication, fast solutions, high-touch service cannot be overstated. When your agency models adaptability and proficiency with overcoming new challenges, whether that’s in day-to-day communications or your social content, the same can be assumed for your staffing solutions.

Be open with how your company understands and is working with new developments in your industry. It’s even okay to be open about the learning curve for new technologies. It’s the agency that is not only willing but eager to discover new ways of working and providing solutions that are best prepared to offer the same adaptability to their business partners.

Your Brand Values: Reliability

On a macro level, your agency provides employment solutions. But in the larger picture, your agency provides peace of mind. Where once was uncertainty, your service provides order and predictability.

Every staffing and recruiting agency works in different ways and serves different industries. How are you demonstrating reliability? How is your agency demonstrating that you can resolve short-term needs for a long-term partnership?

Again, content is crucial in demonstrating reliability. Regularly publishing content that goes deep to unravel the persistent challenges your clients face is the most effective way to model reliability – coming full circle to reinforcing your brand credibility.

Your Brand Values: Authenticity

Nobody has all the answers. In fact, any company who says they’ve got it all figured out is, by their nature, suspect. So it’s not only okay to be open with your struggles; it’s beneficial. Being open about the obstacles your staffing agency faces is just one of the many ways to model the authenticity of your brand. 

Of course, it’s not all struggle that other businesses can identify with. Sharing company milestones, reflecting on interesting articles and industry news – there are so many ways to be genuine and offer a breath of fresh air in the highly commercialized marketplace of staffing and recruiting.

How Can We Help?

At Parqa, we are big believers in the power of branding. Because we were born in staffing and recruiting, we’ve seen firsthand how a solid investment in branding can have compounding effects that last.

Establishing your brand and building credibility by broadcasting how you’re living into your brand values is a lot of work. We can help! If you’d like to learn more about why we’re so fond of branding and its many benefits for staffing and recruiting firms, contact Parqa today.

Discover the world of branding for staffing and recruiting agencies. Download Parqa’s eBook on brand strategy to learn more.

The Crucial Combination_Brand + Strategy Cover

Brand Messaging

Brand Credibility Part 1 of 6: The Set-Up – Brand Messaging for Staffing and Recruiting Agencies

Want to know the fastest, most sure-fire way to build brand credibility for your staffing/recruiting firm? The formula is simple: 

  1. Invest in your brand identity
  2. Create credibility with follow-through

In this blog, we’ll discuss why building your brand should be seen as an investment. In the next installation in our series, we examine how to create brand credibility by living out the same values your business partners are looking for in their job-seekers and recruits:

  • Professionalism
  • Authenticity
  • Honesty
  • Adaptability
  • Expertise
  • Reliability

By following through on your company values you will then be able to reap the many benefits of solid brand credibility. 

Why Brand Credibility for Staffing and Recruiting is so Important

If your staffing or recruiting agency isn’t building brand credibility that projects the same qualities you’re committed to nurturing in your clients and in your talent, you are missing out.

Brand credibility – especially for staffing and recruiting agencies – is the best way to turn potential clients into actual clients. What’s even better, companies that go all-in on their brand strategy are best positioned to realize the rewards of a fully credible brand for the long term.

Broken brand credibility for a company could be ruinous. At Parqa, we like to compare it to attending a client meeting in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Not only can bad branding repel valuable leads, but in the highly competitive market of staffing and recruiting, where so many other agencies are constantly jostling for a leg-up, an inconsistent brand could relegate your business to obscurity in short order.

Not to mention, the damage caused by an inconsistent brand message can have lasting effects that are very difficult to overcome.

How Inconsistent Branding Can Compromise Credibility

Inconsistent branding might not be something that is clear right away – but sometimes, it’s plain and simple. Here are a few ways you can diagnose whether your staffing or recruiting firm is suffering from an inconsistent brand.

The obvious indicators are things like:

  • Misuse of your company logo
  • Inconsistent color schemes or font hierarchy
  • Different taglines used on your website than in social media content
  • Discrepancies in the tone, voice and personality of your content marketing efforts
  • Inconsistency in the language each of your internal teams uses when talking to clients and candidates

However, in many cases, it’s more a gut feeling or a broken experience. That’s the feeling or question that arises when, for example, a marketing agency that specializes in social media management has no social media presence for itself. Or a search company that focuses in recruiting technology leadership roles, but has a clunky, outdated website.

It might seem like a small thing, but a broken brand experience can carry enough weight to completely dismantle the brand’s credibility. If the agency’s messaging is inconsistent, it would be reasonable to assume that the quality of the agency’s talent would also be lacking.

Do The Work and Brand Credibility Will Follow

Think of building your brand as an investment. Credibility is the payoff.

This is modeled every day in staffing and recruiting. With every job placement, there is a period of investing time and resources to train a new hire and get them up to speed. The idea being, eventually the new hire will catch on and get to work and accomplish great things. The same goes for your brand.

When you put the time and effort into building your brand – intentionally and strategically – eventually your brand will build and retain credibility. It will take a lot less effort to maintain solid brand credibility than to repair the damage caused by a broken brand promise.

The Connection Between Your Brand Promise and Company Values

It’s important to differentiate your brand promise from your company values. A brand promise is more of a statement of who you are, and the services or product you offer. Some good examples of well-known brand promises: 

  • Mcdonald’s: “To provide simple easy enjoyment to every customer visit.”
  • Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
  • Starbucks: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

Your company values, on the other hand, are critical to your brand credibility. Your values and the length to which you follow through on those values can either give your brand legs or undercut its credibility. 

Following Through on Your Company Values

If branding is all about telling the world who you are and what you stand for, then following through on your company values completes the message and builds credibility. We believe this is the most effective way to create buy-in among your potential clients, stakeholders and job seekers.

Stay tuned for part two of our series, where we go more in-depth on how to build credibility by investing in your brand and doing the work so that later, your business can enjoy the benefits (and all the leads) of a unique and outstanding brand. 

Discover the world of branding for staffing and recruiting agencies. Download Parqa’s eBook on brand strategy to learn more.

The Crucial Combination_Brand + Strategy Cover

The Importance of Content in Your Staffing Firm’s Marketing Automation Programs

The Importance of Content in Your Staffing Firm’s Marketing Automation Programs

Content is oxygen. Content is the force that breathes life and authenticity into a staffing firm’s marketing strategy. But like any business, streamlining our marketing drumbeat with automated programs can lead to a dependency on a call-to-action. It can be easy to overlook our most powerful tool – content.

We Help Staffing Firms Develop Genuine Content. What’s Yours?

It all begins with content. Come to think of it, it ends with content as well. Here at Parqa, our team of demand-generating experts focus on four rules of developing authentic content:

  1. Avoid being overly promotional
  2. Get vulnerable
  3. Remember your audience
  4. Don’t be afraid to be a maverick

Keeping these four simple steps in mind we focus on developing stories from our industry, and of our candidates that are compelling. We’ve discovered what makes us passionate about our work, whether it’s the people we serve, how our partnerships can empower other staffing firms to achieve great things. This is what motivates us.

We’re not alone. Many staffing firms are also seeing the value in maximizing storytelling to gain leads. But content alone, isn’t going to move the needle. That is why we believe to make content truly effective it should be paired with a savvy automation strategy.

An Effective Equation: Content + Marketing Automation = Deals

Marketing automation is an extremely effective way for staffing firms to show up regularly for their potential audience. Automation can be a great way to plan, build, and maintain vital campaigns. It can reduce unnecessary time wasted on busywork, and maximize the time a sales team could otherwise spend winning clients and closing deals.

The basics of marketing automation can be simplified to 5 quick steps:

  1. Creating great content (see above).
  2. Build your marketing funnel.
  3. Create a clear call-to-action (preferably one that helps your prospects to solve a problem).
  4. Broadcast relevant messages on a timely schedule targeted to your prospects at their various stages of the sales funnel.
  5. Empower your sales team to create a delightful sales experience for your prospects and customers and help them every step of the way.

Once your firm has settled on a content strategy and automation, check your work. Is it working? Are the leads coming in? Just like making pancakes, the first efforts may be a flop. You may need to tweak your technique. (It helps to think of automation as an ongoing, constantly evolving process.)

How Can Parqa Help Your Staffing Firm Build an Effective Content + Automation Program?

At Parqa, we were born in staffing and recruiting, and we’re proud to give back to an industry that has given us so much. It is our goal to create the very best connections that last.

If you like what you hear, we’d love to tell you more. Get in touch with us today and find out how we can help you create an automated marketing program with heart.

website outline document on table with laptop

Is Your Website Up to Date?

How long has it been since you’ve updated your website? The branding, design and flow, and content of a website need periodic updates to give visitors accurate information and good user experience. With this checklist, you can diagnose some of the common problems seen on sites in need of updates.

This FREE checklist covers the following:

  • Causes of slow sites
  • Branding consistency
  • Site structure and flow
  • Relevant and useful content
  • And much more!
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Get Started with Content Marketing Using S.M.A.R.T Goals

“The secret of a getting ahead is getting started.” 

As I said in my previous blog, going straight into content production mode without a proper digital marketing strategy tied to your goals is like heading out on a road trip without a map—you’ll run out of gas before you ever reach your destination. 

While it’s important to “just get started” with your content marketing efforts, setting a few high-level goals can be the difference between successfully growing your business through content marketing and getting left in the dust by your competitors who are investing in content marketing. If you begin creating random content, especially, overly-salesy content, you risk isolating prospects or completely turning them away with shoddy, self-promotional content that lacks value to the end user. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about your audience. So be smart, and set some realistic goals that your team, whether an entire marketing team or one employee, can spend the proper time needed to create something your company is proud to share, and are confident will help someone through your sales cycle. 


Related Post: Is Your Online Brand Aligned With Your Personal Brand? ➢


 

S.M.A.R.T Goals – Specific. Measurable. Attainable. Relevant. Timely 

Specific – is your goal specific? E.g., I will increase my website traffic by 20% from 5,244 to 6,292.8 visitors per month by April 1st, 2019  by increasing my blog frequency from 2 times per week to 4 times per week 

Measurable – is your goal measurable? E.g., I will generate 12 new client leads worth a total of $1.8 million in potential opportunity revenue by April 1st, 2019 

Attainable – is your goal achievableE.g., I will grow my new clients leads by 20% from 10 worth $1.5 million to 12 worth a total of $1.8 million in potential revenue opportunity 

Relevant – Is your goal relevant? E.g., My goal of increasing my web traffic by 20% this quarter to 6,292 visitors will allow me to reach my overall goal of increasing my total new client leads and revenue opportunity by 40% year over year 

Timely – Is your goal timelyE.g., My goal is to improve our website traffic by 5% every month in quarter 1, which will lead to a 15% increase by April 1st, 2019. 


Related Post: Visual Content Can Boost Your Lead Conversions – But How? ➢


 

In other words, don’t underestimate the effort and attention needed to provide quality content that sticks. No matter the size of the team, content is never a quick fix, it’s an investment in the long term success of your business. Start small, and find a point you feel you can replicate your efforts and continue to build upon that. It’s ok to have your goal be one piece of content each Quarter, or even one piece of content Bi-Annually. The key takeaway is to start somewhere and allow that following to build. 

Parqa provides full-ranging content marketing services based on your S.M.A.R.T. goals that allow you to communicate your brand and expertise without adding unreasonable responsibility to your staff. If you want to discuss how you can pivot your marketing efforts to maintain and grow within your industry, reach out to Parqa today! 

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Buyer Persona: What It Is & Why You Need One

Have you ever taken on a client who may not have been the ideal client? They may be the wrong sized company, not have best practices in place, or be in a slightly different industry than you were hoping for.  

There are several different reasons why someone might not be the ideal partner (and this can go either way) and no company wants that. We all want to be clients of choice and be capable of being selective of our current client base. But where do you start determining who your ideal partner is? I’ve outlined a few simple steps to narrow in on that buyer persona.  


Related Post: Inbound Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide For Recruiting Firms ➢


Definition of a Buyer Persona  

As HubSpot describes, “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.” Buyer personas are designed to be a realistic version of the ideal person you’d like to have as a client.  

Determine the Title of Your Buyer Persona  

Most recruiting firms deal with two to three different people when working with their clients. The people I typically see are the HR Director, the CEO/CFO/COO, or someone supporting the office who’s been tasked with finding a recruiting firm, such an Office Manager, Marketing Coordinator, or Executive Assistant (depending on the size of the company). There could be a few other titles or positions, but these seem to be the most common ones we see in the recruiting industry.  

The next step is to narrow it down to one ideal persona. In this case, I’ll say our ideal buyer persona is the HR Director 

Curate the details of your buyer persona 

If our persona is the HR Director, we want to gather all the details about this person. We can say on average, this person is usually a female, usually middle-aged, and has been in the industry for about 15 years. She is most likely married, has a few children, and lives within 20-30 miles of her office. She’s worked in the recruiting space of HR before, but her primary job is not to recruit new members of the company. The company is mid-sized, about 300-400 employees, so she has many different initiatives to work on.  


Related Post: 6 Signs You Need a Content Marketing Strategy ➢


Design the Buyer Persona Story 

Here is the story we can now put together about our persona:  

Human Resources Hallie  

Hallie is 42 years old, married, and has three kids (aged 6, 10 and 13.) She works as the HR Director for a mid-sized insurance company. They have multiple locations throughout the state and employ 320 people on average. She’s worked for a handful of companies over the years and has been with this company for the last 5 years.  

In one of her past HR roles, she spent time recruiting for internal roles, but it isn’t what she loved to do. Since there aren’t enough people on her team, she’s tasked with handling a large amount of the HR responsibilities and doesn’t have a lot of time when there are numerous open positions to fill within the company. She’s never worked directly with a recruiting company and thinks they can be kind of expensive for what her company is looking for. Hallie tends to use LinkedIn and search engines on the internet to find the information she needs to solve the problems at hand 

Now with all that information on Hallie, we have a lot of different ways we can target Hallie to make sure our recruiting agency is the one she calls when she needs to find talent. On the next blog, we’ll discuss how we can target Hallie based on the information we know about her 

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The Importance of Voice in Your Recruiting Efforts

Remember the last time you got a phone call from a robo-caller? It may be using the correct words and grammar, but you can tell right away that it isn’t human. When you hear the voice, it’s obvious that something is off and that clouds the message. 

Every writer has a voice. Even if you don’t take the time to develop it, your writing will have a certain tone and style. Just like you can recognize a friend by the way that you talk, you can recognize similar patterns in someone’s writing.  

Using the right voice is important for narration in fiction writing, but it’s just as important in business. Making sure your business’s content is relatable, relevant and easy to understand goes a long way with both clients and candidates. Take the time to recognize your business’s voice and cultivate good habits in your content to build immediate rapport with your readers. 


Related Post: 5 Simple Ways to Repurpose Your Best Marketing Content ➢


Talk to Your Audience, Not at Them 

Even if you can match the right tone, relying on unnecessary language to either sound smart or sound more official gets in the way. There is a time and place for formal language, and it may even work for your company. Make sure your content sounds like a conversation and not a textbook. 

Writing the way that people talk to each other makes things easier to read and very human. You can connect with the writer quickly and even place yourself in their shoes. For recruiting firms, use the simplest language you can to get your point across.  

Jargon is ok when you serve an industry where those terms are commonplace. When you explain concepts with more complex language than required, you come off as condescending and detached. The voice you use is how many people relate to your company first, so put away your thesaurus and make sure you aren’t turning them away. 

Consistency Establishes Credibility 

In business, your reputation is everything. You work hard to establish a name for yourself and your business so why shouldn’t your content support that brand? We all like working with reliable people, but if your content’s voice isn’t consistent, you’re building a negative reputation for yourself. 

Think of it like meeting friends at a party. The person who is known for being rude and crass shows up and the rest of the group tries their best to avoid that person. The person known for telling great stories and keeping the party entertained always has an audience. Your voice establishes consistent expectations for your audience. When clients and candidates know that they can come to you for clear concise content, they will be more likely to come back and recommend your firm. 


Related Post: Content is King: How to Build Your Credibility With Content Marketing ➢


 

Differentiate Yourself 

Like I mentioned before, whether you’ve built your voice or not, it’s there. This voice is unique to your brand. Take advantage of voice in your content to differentiate your firm. Other than making your content easier to understand, your voice gives your company a personality.  

When working with candidates, make sure your voice matches the hiring personas you’ve set up. Matching the voice and tone to those personas will stand out to the candidates that you are working to attract. Similarly, your brand voice establishes you as an expert to potential clients. You must walk a line between attracting candidates and clients as well as building credibility. 

Developing a consistent voice that is unique to your brand is just as important as a good logo. When you have a strong voice, your audience can immediately identify your content. They know they can trust the information provided and they can contact you to get even more information.  

Learn how Parqa helps executive search firms find and build their voice to creating engaging digital content. 

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Rank on Google and Bank with Content Marketing

I started my first recruiting firm in 2001. In 2006, I hired a marketing agency to do SEO and PPC for us. That was before most people even knew what SEO and PPC stood for.  Back then, we were very early adopters in growing our recruiting firm through digital marketing.

When we started paying for ads on Google, we were the only firm in Minnesota doing so. We were the only firm paying to play. Consequently, I was shocked by how quickly we were able to rank #1 on Google. In fact, it led to me becoming obsessed with ranking #1 for every keyword I could possibly think of.

The agency we partnered with must have hated me, as I would lay in bed with my iPad searching for related keywords. If we didn’t show up #1, I would email our agency and ask why. Today, our recruiting firm ranks #1 for over 800 keywords related to recruiting and staffing services. We are crushing our competitors in the rankings.

In the early years, I thought that the only thing that mattered was rankings. I would ask every client that would call our firm, “How did you find us?” and they’d consistently answer, “Google.” Hearing this over and over again would get me as excited as the proverbial kid in a candy store. I couldn’t believe how many calls we were getting because we ranked #1 on Google.


Related Post: Content Marketing: Your 3-Step Recipe for Lead Generation ➢


Fast forward to 2019. More and more firms are in the digital game using agencies to increase their online visibility, which has made the process of ranking #1 a more challenging endeavor.

The typical search, such as “executive search firms in Minneapolis,” will have 7-10 competing firms paying to show up on the first page of Google. Try it for yourself.  Pretend you’re a prospective client and Google what they would. If you own a finance and accounting firm, search “Finance and Accounting Recruiters.” Do you see your company in the results? Or do you see your competitors?

Last summer, I spoke at NAPS—one of the largest staffing and recruiting conferences in the country. My presentation was titled “Is Your Website Your Best Salesperson,” and I spent most of my allotted hour sharing why the content was king.

Every year our firm will do around 300 placements, with hundreds of companies calling us after finding us on Google. In 2019, my question to ask people when they call us has changed from “How did you find us?” to “Why did you call us?” The search ranking is usually how they found us, but the content on our website that they read is why they called us. Today, 1/3 of our revenue comes from content on our website.

Where your company ranks on Google is still important, but never forget how vital the role your site’s content plays. A high search ranking brings traffic to your website, but the content on your website is what converts the traffic into revenue.

Contact us today to receive a free website analysis from Parqa Marketing.

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